The Suns aren't who we thought they were

Thank the basketball gods for that

The Suns were the laughingstock of the NBA (*checks watch*) about three minutes ago.

Bereft of their own first-round picks until the early 2030s and limping through the wreckage of the Kevin Durant/Bradley Beal era, there wasn’t a lot of hope in the desert. The Suns entered the season with every basketblogger’s least-favorite 20-point scorer (Jalen Green), every casual’s least-favorite superstar (Devin Booker), a revamped front office and coaching staff filled with guys whom owner Mat Ishbia shotgunned a beer with at Michigan State, and a roster composed entirely of undersized wings, former Charlotte Hornets centers, and rookies.

That doesn’t sound super promising, does it?

And yet! Phoenix came out of the gate respectably, going 12-9 against an assortment of Peeps marshmallow animals. I was intrigued, but the Suns’ second quarter promised to be far more challenging. Surely, they would settle in as a frisky but ultimately ceiling-limited team against a tougher schedule.

And yet! The Suns keep on holding serve. At 21-15, they’ve now beaten the Timberwolves (twice), Spurs (twice), Warriors, Lakers (twice), and even the dread Thunder. On a night-to-night basis, the Suns can and have beaten anyone (well, except Houston, as last night proved for the third time this season).

The way they’re exceeding expectations is what makes this so exciting. If you were one of the few prophets prognosticating a rosy start to the season in the Valley, the vision would have gone something like this: Devin Booker plays at a top-10 level, Green proves to be a competent, efficient sidekick, the mostly-unproven role players tread water in their minutes, and a three-point-powered offense carries them to respectability.

In the words of Dikembe Mutombo: No, no, no. Booker can’t buy a three-pointer, Green has played 30 minutes all season, the role players are excelling, and the team’s surprisingly stout defense has been the story.

It starts, as the best tales do, with a villain — The Villain, to be exact. Dillon Brooks, brought over with Green in the Durant trade, has brought about a much-needed overhaul of Phoenix’s entire vibe, erasing last year’s whinging softness with brass knuckles and hilarious pettiness.

Per Cleaning the Glass, Brooks is posting the most efficient shooting season of his career on a whopping 27% usage (higher than Durant or Anthony Davis). He’s nailing 46% of his pull-up jumpers, a number on par with Kawhi Leonard and Steph Curry, and he’s been unstoppable around the rim. Brooks has shown far more creativity and patience in the paint than I remember (or at least, he’s making them more than I remember). Look at this pretty two-foot jump-stop/step-through combo:

Will he cool off? Probably, but when? The thing about regression is that it rarely happens just because you noticed an outlier. Small-sample statistics operate on their own, unhurried schedule. Maybe Brooks starts missing everything tomorrow; maybe he doesn’t realize he isn’t Tatumless Jaylen Brown until the Suns are knee-deep in a second-round playoff battle against an on-their-heels Western juggernaut.

Brooks isn’t a particularly likable chap, with his cheap shots and physicality. But if you want mean, he’ll bring the nasty, with a side of freshly-baked headbutts. (Perhaps to a detriment. Brooks leads the league in technical fouls with a whopping 12; no one else has more than nine. Remember, players start getting suspended for techs after 16! He’s almost certain to start missing games, a loss the Suns can ill afford.)

While Brooks’ particular brand of slavering intensity is well-known, few expected it to spread through the rest of the roster like rabies. The entire team has become infected with Brooks’ energy. According to teammate Collin Gillespie on the Young Man and the Three podcast, it started in training camp, when Brooks incurred two technical fouls during the first team scrimmage with real refs (lol!). Treating practices like games is a coach’s dream, and Brooks set the tone from the start.

He’s even found a disciple; Gillespie (one of my preseason deep-cut breakout candidates) has become Villain Jr. Gillespie would be a leading candidate for Sixth Man of the Year, but he may lose eligibility after thriving as a starter in Green and Grayson Allen’s injury absences.

Of 150 players averaging at least three catch-and-shoot triples per game, Gillespie sits atop the leaderboard, lacing 52% of his tries. That’s astounding, even if it’s a skill he’d shown in small flashes previously.

His work on the other side of the ball has been far more unexpected. Despite his 6’2”-on-tiptoes stature and short wingspan, Gillespie has been competitive defensively. He picks up ballhandlers full court, veers around screens with a tight handbrake, and sneaks up on ballhandlers when they’re least expecting it. He gets an insane number of steals by poking the ball out from behind, like a frontcourt Grand Theft Alvarado:

The Suns’ eighth-ranked defense is nearly five points better defensively with Gillespie on the floor than off, and that’s despite Gillespie typically being replaced by a defensive hound in Jordan Goodwin.

Speaking of Goodwin, the longtime Poetry favorite is having a moment. Just a couple of days after talking about how new coach Jordan Ott has filled him with confidence (“He tells me to shoot pull-up treys… I NEVER heard that until this year!”), Goodwin went out and went a whopping 11-for-17 from deep in a back-to-back against the Thunder and Rockets.

Ott has adroitly weaponized Goodwin’s run-till-the-battery-burns-out energy. Goodwin guards 94 feet, crashes the offensive glass hard (he’s one of the best offensive rebounders in the league, pound-for-pound), and forces a ton of turnovers in his minutes.

Ott deserves a ton of credit for the success of Gillespie, Goodwin, and everyone else. He’s coaxed some redemptive minutes at center from Mark Williams (who was flabbergastingly bad on defense last year but looks like a whole new seven-footer now) and Oso Ighodaro (whom Suns fans wanted to boot into a black hole as recently as November). He’s reinvigorated the woefully underappreciated Royce O’Neale, who keeps drilling triples, playing competent defense against bigger and stronger players, and firing the occasional flashy pass. He’s empowered burgeoning defensive menace Ryan Dunn to do more than just stand in the corner and miss threes, and he’s unlocked the best version of two-way diminutive chaos agent Jamaree Bouyea.

More tactically, Ott and his staff looked at the Suns and decided to make up for a talent deficit with an emphasis on the NBA’s hottest (and swiftly dwindling) market inefficiency: Winning the possession game.

The Suns are fifth in offensive rebounding and third in forcing turnovers. That last stat is particularly wild given that the team doesn’t have many established ballhawks aside from the relatively low-minutes Goodwin, but it’s a swarming defense by committee that relies on pressure and sneaky traps. Nine players are averaging at least 0.9 steals per game (10 if you include Green), and they routinely press full court to speed up and unnerve opposing ballhandlers. Ott is one of a growing number of coaches playing a European-style 10-man rotation most nights, keeping players fresh so they can maintain maximum energy.

Ott has also crafted a solid offense (13th as of this writing) despite a distinct lack of playmakers. He’s leaned heavily on Grayson Allen as an initiator — and it’s worked! Allen’s averaging 6.7 assists per 100 possessions, half again as many as his previous career high. He’s also notching more than 15 points per game, another career best. 38% from deep is actually the worst mark of Allen’s NBA tenure aside from his rookie season, but he’s doing it on a whopping eight attempts per game. Add to that his nearly two nightly steals, and you’ve got a surprisingly well-rounded contributor.

But despite Brooks’ and Allen’s big years, the offense still lives and dies with Devin Booker. A down three-pointer hasn’t stopped him from posting a reasonably efficient 25-point scoring average (driven by improved free-throw drawing). He’s as deadly as ever from the midrange, but he’s also become an elite finisher at the rim.

And Booker’s passing (which improved tremendously under Chris Paul’s tutelage, as I wrote years ago) gets more creative every year. This through-the-legs chest pass is something you wouldn’t see at the Y, much less in the NBA:

Sum it up, and the Suns’ attack is more than five points better with Booker on the floor than off, a top-quintile number, and is above average with him on the floor overall.

Booker is also one of the few perimeter scorers who doesn’t shy away from the little things. He fights through screens, chases shooters, plays solid help defense, and isn’t afraid to get chippy. Watch him battle Jabari Smith here:

That grittiness translates elsewhere, too. Jordan Ott loves to deploy him as an off-ball screener. Wince as Booker blindsides Russell Westbrook here to spring Gillespie for a wide-open layup:

A surprising number of analysts I respect think Booker is having a down season, mostly because of his 30% three-point shooting. That’s missing the forest for a particularly ugly tree.

How far can Booker take this Phoenix team? It’s hard to say. The Suns will still likely have to battle through the play-in thanks to a very difficult remaining schedule (although there are a couple of teams in the West’s current top six who could be vulnerable — looking at you, Lakers). Phoenix feels top-heavy, and an injury to Booker or Brooks at the wrong time could spell doom. A lack of a real power forward will hurt them against the Denvers and Houstons of the world.

And internally, the Jalen Green question is looming over everything. Green is a talented but inconsistent shotmaker who has incrementally improved every season but still looks the part of an empty-calories gunner. That won’t fly under Ott for the long-term, and the team will need to make a tough decision on a limited sample: The trade deadline is just a month away, and the Suns have no idea if Green can do, well, anything.

Phoenix desperately needs another secondary ballhandler and scorer, but they’ve also built up their wins with a blue-collar attitude not typically associated with the high flyer. They would absolutely part with Green if another front office coveted him, but I’m not sure he has too much trade value right now. The team didn’t draft Green and owes him nothing beyond an opportunity to prove himself. The smart bet might be keeping him. At worst, he can be an emergency break-glass bench scorer, while the best-case scenarios still involve All-Star potential.

Before the season, Ishbia had said he wanted a new Suns team with “some grit, some determination, some work ethic, some grind, some joy. We just haven’t had that.” The sweat mentality is certainly there: Kenny Atkinson recently said the Suns were the hardest-working team in the league. The carefree joy of exceeding expectations is present, too (“On live TV, bro?”). This is a tough, good, and fun team.

We might have chortled at the early implementation of Ishbia’s dream. Ain’t nobody laughing at the Suns now.